You said there was nothing funny which of course is simply your stance, the problem was that you initially tried to make it look like it did not "exist" which was untrue.
It was and is true, which is why I responded as I did; if you choose to believe otherwise, that is your prerogative alone.
Lol, it doesn't have to be either? Then what is it? You trying to make it look like it was some mysterious mystical response where really you just had your knickers in a twist.
I did not seek to "make" it look like anything of the kind - or indeed anything other than what it was; should you choose to try to read more into it, whatever that may be, that is, once again, up to you alone.
Yet that is not unique at all, rare sounds more appropriate.
Fair comment, although it is far from rare in Sorabji yet there are very few instances of it in other composers' solo keyboard works.
We already established that duration in isolation to everything else is not a measure of difficulty that is logical and unneccesary to mention so you are just repeating yourself again. You again are comparing non piano works to piano works and trying to measure performance stamina which is strange and also in the past in this thread have compared solo works with operas which is even more odd.
Again, I did not and do not "compare"
per se; however, the performance stamina issue is obviously pertinent in works such as those of Sorabji that have been mentioned in ways that do not apply to individual performers in a Wagner opera. "Contrast", perhaps, but not "compare".
This thread of discussion came up because you argued that you are not talking that time is a factor in measure of the unique difficulty of Sorabji to which I said length of time really is not a strong factor contributing to a call for it to be considered a unique situation. You mentioned many times about length of time and when called up on it you start saying its not length of time by itself but other factors as well which contribute to some unique difficulty in Sorabji which I believe simply is not there to be called unique, rare perhaps is more adequate.
You have already stated that and, to a point, I can accept it although, as I mentioned, it is very rare in other composers' solo keyboard works but relatively common in Sorabji's.
Yes I do say I don't have to ask those who performed it because I can do it myself. The time and stamina required to play the larger works is rarely found true, but it is not unique.
I did not realise that you had performed Sorabji's works. I am pleased to hear it now and look forward very much to hearing you do so. As a matter of interest, which ones are in your repertoire?
No one said they are exactly the same but they are related to one another strongly. In your first response about performer challenges vs audience challenges you said are a "rather different issue" however now you backtrack saying "I did not say that the two issues are or are not related" a fence sitting comment and contradictory to your initial stance, this fence sitting is something you like doing though it makes your position look rather weak especially when you said something else beforehand which was not a fence sitting comment.
Nonsense. The issues for a performer of one of these works are quite different to those for listeners to them. Listeners do not require the immense physical energy that the performers do. Mentioning that the issues are "related" is not a fence sitting comment; no one is sitting on a fence here and there is in any case no such fence on which to sit. The only related elements are the length of time that listeners and performers each have to sit still and concentrate on the music, but that's about as far as it goes. Another factor that will not affect, still less involve, the audience is the hundreds of hours that the keyboard soloist will have needed in order to prepare his/her performance.
They don't usually talk to their audience? Heaven's perhaps in your neck of the woods they are still stuck in the old tradition of bow, perform, bow. Modern concerts these days have a propensity for the performers to speak to their audience, it is a certain difference to be expected in the 21st century if you have any concerting industry experience at all. Not speaking to an audience and playing a single instrument for hours on end will not sit well with the majority of concert goers.
Well, perhaps concert traditions and practice in US are indeed different to those in UK these days; if so, you have no business to question my "concerting industry experience" other, perhaps, than in US. Indeed, most live music performances in UK do not include performers speaking to their audiences; when that does happen (and of course it does on occasion, perhaps a little more frequently now than during the past century), it is very much the exception. Lest you be in any doubt, I have no problem in principle with such pre-performance talks; indeed, there was one before Jonathan Powell's performance of
OC in Oxford just over two years ago, although that was not given by Jonathan himself (who was presumably resting and psyching himself up for the performance and who had a very bad cold in any case) but by me. The only issue with having such a pre-performance talk in such circumstances is that this makes the overall event that much longer again which, given the lengths of some of those pieces, could be something of an issue.
Performers should have the freedom to break it up as far as they consider appropriate for their concert program.
Which is exactly what Jonathan Powell, for example, has done when performing
Sequentia Cyclica (where no such breaks are specified in the score) and in
OC (where two such breaks
are implied in the score but he takes only one). Again, I have no problem in principle with that except that, again, it does mean that the entire event takes that much longer; Organ Symphony No. 2 plays for between 8½ and 9 hours but its world première took well in excess of 10 hours because intervals were taken between each of its three movements.
So you expect people who perform Sorabji to have no money interest at all? That is peculiar and strange although I can safely assume that attending such concerts would not be as desireable and other options. As a professional performer I would not consider doing such concerts a valuable use of my time if I was not paid appropriately. It is not clear at all that any professional performer would spend thousands of hours preparing a work only to be paid a pittance if at all for the effort.
I did not and do not suggest any such thing. What I did state was that it is hardly the prime motivation for playing any repertoire, be it Chopin or Sorabji - and sorry to mention Organ Symphony No. 2 again, but were one to factor in the preparation of a typeset critical edition of the score as well as the many hundreds of hours' performance preparation time, a fair fee for a single performance might run into six figures, but I've not noticed Kevin Bowyer buying châteaux, yachts or private jets on the proceeds of his performances! That said, there ARE such performances;
OC itself has now received more than 20, all but one during the past 40 years and other large scale Sorabji works have likewise been performed and broadcast; if it's unclear to you why the performers have expended so much effort of such pieces for disproportionately small financial reward, you'll have to ask the performers - of whom I thought you said that you were one yourself!
Yes but try to remove notes from something like Bach for instance and see if it is any easier than Sorabji, you will find that it is many times more difficult. So one can reduce a score and still preserve the sound with works that are severely dense in notes, this is an obvious capability if you have any experience at all reducing works down.
There is no arrogance at all if you have any experience at all teaching students the idea of reducing a score is hardly arrogant at all and indeed elevating and respecting the composer as some people might wish to play their works but cannot so reducing the score allows them access to it as well as preserving the sound that should be there. Your comment here that is is filled with arrogance is hardly logical at all.
The implicit assumption here is that plenty of music could benefit from - or at the very least not be disadvantaged by - such reductions (mainly textural) albeit that Bach's would be considerably harder to treat in such a way than some other composers'; if that is not arrogance, it certainly suggests at the very least that people like you who are prepared to spend time in doing that kind of thing have questionable regard for the composers whose works they so treat. I am not, of course, suggesting that all composers' scores are and should be treated as sacrosanct - far from it - but one has only to consider how others sought to persuade Bruckner that they knew better than he did how to compose his symphonies to discover the problem and its possible consequences. How, for example, might you go about paring down one of Sorabji's fugues, where the number of voices is what it is?
Of course one can go past that time but the further you go the more you lose your audience. If you start playing works that go for many hours without break you are certainly going to lose the great majority of your average audience member. This is a concern that all performers need to take into consideration and most especially soloists.
Practical historical experience does not bear this out and I was not in any case, suggesting that pieces that play for many hours should - or are expected to - be played without breaks. All but one of Sorabji's seven piano symphonies,
OC, his four extant piano Toccatas and his fifth and longest piano sonata are divided into movements; only the third piano symphony, his two sets of variations on the
Dies Iræ and the Symphonic Variations are not but, even in these instances,
Sequentia Cyclica is performed with two breaks and the fact that the ms. of Symphonic Variations (his longest piano work of all) was bound in three volumes implies similar expected treatment. The only other exceptions here are the second and third organ symphonies, each of which contains one very long movement and one would not usually think to break up a single movement into two sections separated by an intgerval in performance. "Your average audience member" is in any case more likely not to want to attend such performances in the first place rather than attending but not staying the course - but then not all audiences are "average"!
Again you are comparing works which are not solo works and being over 20 minutes is fine, its when you are many times over that limit that you should start being concerned as a soloist. The effect your music has over listeners depreciates, the attention of your audience wanes, the energy of the concert drags.
OK, so if not 20 minutes, what instead would you seek to advocate as a maximum acceptable duration? Holding the audience's attention over any timespan is in any case at least in part about how effectively the performer manages to do this and to what extent the music itself is capable of holding such attention.
So even if you experienced a time dilation of 4+ hours being 1+ hour what is the point in mentioning such things if you don't assume others can experience the same anomaly?
Again, I did not suggest that no one else would experience the same or something similar; I stated that I would not necessarily expect that as a matter of course, not least because no two pairs of ears will respond identically to any musical performance. That said, the person who sat next to me for the world première of Organ Symphony No. 2 did indeed more or less react as I did in that respect following the close of its middle movement.
This is an odd change of story since you said "Theme and 50 variations - of Sorabji's Second Organ Symphony which, at the world première in 2010, felt to me like around an hour and three quarters of continuous music but was in reality 4½ hours." Please get your story straight because these changes are quite unusual.
What is not "straight" about this? It is perfectly clear and unambiguous and it seems that you understood it anyway, so your quibble with it now is puzzling!
Yes exactly however if we are comparing long operas to long solo performances, operas will be much easier in general to deal with long times because there is so much more on stage to distract the eye and move attention toward, where with soloists you have a single stagnant scene.
The mistake that you make here is to assume that most audience members will react similarly to either the one or the other; yes, of course there is much more visually in an operatic performance than there is in a performance by just one keyboard player but, as I stated, the purpose of all of it is not to distract from the music and so there is a lot more on which to concentrate.
Yes in my opinion which is hardly a marginalized perspective on the issue unlike those who oppose this stance. The argument had nothing to do with drawing attention away from the music but giving the audience more things to look at while dealing with hours of performance. Logically an opera will be much easier than a solo performance because of all the activity one can pick and choose to observe. This logically also makes much sense which strengthens the position rather than considering it being only an opinion.
See above - but what might you suppose Wagner would have thought about this particular notion of the visual elements as a possible (and even implicity welcome) distraction from his music? - or does that not matter to you?
You clearly have problems comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Again comparing non solo works to solo works and speculating on the effect on audiences. These also hardly go up to the 3-4 hour mark which was of more concern. Going over the estimated 20min mark is fine but when you go over it by a great % margin you risk losing your audiences attention and care.
I have no such problems and, as already stated, this factor seems not to have pertained on the occasions when such works have been performed; the risk of which you write is therefore largely one of your own invention. Yes, occasionally there have been issues for a handful of audience members dependent upon public transport following late conclusions of such performances, but that's about it.
Some people? Maybe you have lost contact with the generations that have come after yours. What composers do is irrelevant they can write works that go for years on end if they want to, what we are considering is what compositions would work in a solo concert. If a composer believes that many people are going to sit through many many hours of a single work of their then they are being rather arrogant if they demand their work never be broken up into small parts. Not all composers write for their works to be performed anyway.
Again, see above in respect of long works being broken down into sections and the very few examples of this in Sorabji. There have not exactly been a lot of generations that have come after mine! I imagine that, in Haydn's last years, no one would have anticipated that a composer would write a symphony a century or so later that plays for around an hour and a half without intervals between any of its four movements, yet who complains about Mahler's Sixth Symphony today? A few performances in Beethoven's time included several works which came to a total duration far greater than what is expected of a "conventional" length orchestral programme today, just as Anton Rubinstein put on programmes far longer than what is expected of a piano recital today, but did anyone complain in either case or refuse to attend?
And a reason why those composers your mentioned will struggle rise to any mainstream attention.
Why should they even wish or be concerned to do so? - after all, what, today, when there are literally hundreds of thousands of composers active, IS "mainstream" attention in any case? Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and others are obviously "mainstream" and their legacies continue to last from generation to generation, but did anyone complain about the 50 or so minute duration of Beethoven's
Eroica Symphony or
Hammerklavier Sonata in terms of the difficulty of maintaining concentration on what they convey?
Incidentally, to return to the case of Feldman's Second Quartet, it might even be argued by some that the sheer lack of activity and contrast throughout its 5½ hours or so imposes a different challenge upon an audience because there are so few events and so little information over long stretches of time.
Anyway, since no one else seems to be participiating in this side discussion, perhaps now might be as good a time as any to turn it back to the thread topic.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: Opus Clavicembalisticum difficulty